Group jailed for beating up dad protecting his daughter

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A group of young men who brutally beat up a father when he tried to stop them bothering his daughter and her friends have been sent to jail in Austria.

The men, who are from the Chechen community, had approached the teenage girls - some of whom were also Chechnen - at a restaurant in Vienna's Millennium City in February and told them they were behaving badly and should go home.

When one of the girl's mother who was with them at the time tried to intervene, she was told: "We, and only we, are bringing the girls back home. They are our country's women."

The mother then called her husband Martin P., 44, who came and confronted the young men but was left with severe injuries and needing a titanium plate in his eye socket after they beat him up.

A passer-by who tried to help was also beaten by the group.

The men - aged between 19 and 24-years-old - were later identified and arrested at the end of March.

Now a court in Vienna has sentenced three of them to between eight and 10 months in jail for GBH. A fourth was spared jail but fined €480 for inciting violence.

One witness speaking to APA said the group are known in the area as self-appointed guardians of public morality.

They reportedly call themselves “The Wolves” and use Wolf as a surname on social media.

The men claimed in court that they had been given the job of protecting the girls by the mother, with one of them posting online: “We are not youngsters, we are family - the Mafia family."

Another wrote: "There are 1,000 reasons why we need to kill you, but the best is because of the funny looks."